JOURNAL: Food and the RC

The global shift to the resilient community model (RC) won't be merely a function of systems disruption (as it is in developing economies and in COIN efforts). In the main, it will be driven by basic economic necessity as the costs for core inputs (food and energy/fuel) soar beyond affordablity. For example. According the the Wall Street Journal, price inflation for basic items is already very high:

The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

The trend data appears solid, in that this inflation will not abate in intensity for some time to come (NOTE: this a natural outgrowth of a global market system that has expanded beyond the capacity for oversight during a substrate shift -- lots of dislocation will result). Food riots in Asia were just an early warning signal. Given that median incomes are static in the West (eight years of data), likely due to fierce global competition from below , these increases in core inputs are going to quickly reach an unsustainable percentage of the average household's disposable income. In tandem with the upward march of energy/fuel costs and a housing crisis (home foreclosures in California are running at 500 a day now), a widespread shift to the RC is increasingly inevitable. Don't expect any help from the nation-state on getting this done (unless the DoD helps out via the backdoor of RCs for COIN and stability operations).

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

For an illustration of this, see "Rice price rise takes toll in Manila slum"
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rice23apr23,1,4967247.story

Mike Davis has noted in his Planet of Slums that slum dwellers have not so much been attracted to the urban areas as they have been evicted from the countryside due to modernized agriculture.
http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Slums-Mike-Davis/dp/1844671607/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209046630&sr=8-1

And now rising fuel and fertilizer costs are disrupting this modernized agriculture. See

"Sheeran said rising fuel and fertilizer prices were adding to the misery. She said she recently returned from a trip to Kenya’s Rift Valley, where the cost of fertilizer has climbed 135 percent since December.

That increase, along with rising prices for seed and diesel, led farmers to plant only one-third the crops they planted last year — a pattern being repeated around the world, she said. "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/22/AR2008042201481.html?sid=ST2008042203624

[John Robb]

More from that article:

"Farmers have no access to credit, so when prices go up, they can't afford to plant," she said, urging governments, particularly in developing nations, to invest more in programs to support domestic agriculture.

"I think much of the world is waking up to the fact that food doesn't spontaneously show up on grocery store shelves," she said.

[tim302]

http://www.rivendellorganics.com/ecocity.html

Feed it with sewage and waste heat and you turn a bug (dense urban areas blow off a lot of sewage and waste heat) into a feature.

[John Robb]

From NG (via e-mail):

Interesting post, John. You seem to assume that just because foodstuffs are taking a greater percentage of family income in developed countries that this will promote a move toward RC. I wonder. Might it not instead translate into increased political demands on the central nation-state? It seems that the move toward RC will only happen if the central nation-state fails to meet these rising political demands (which may be likely, but is not inevitable, particularly in more densely populated countries where energy costs per capita may be more containable).

This raises a further unasked question in your brief, namely whether the nation-state elites will regard RC as a threat or as actually a way to strengthen their capacity and resiliency.

You say that we shouldn't "expect any help from the nation-state on getting [RC] done," but it seems to me important to ask whether that assumed lack of help is a result of lack of capacity (e.g. Katrina) or because of outright hostility to RC, which they might perceive as an erosion of their authority. Which way that breaks out (and it may vary be locale) will likely structure the politics of any moves toward RC.

[John Robb]

NG, with huge and growing structural deficit (this quarter's deficit was the highest on record), it's unlikely any help is forthcoming. Also, the precise mechanisms by which to provide help are very murky (there's not a clean or remotely easy way to fix this, even if it could be fixed, given the scale and scope of the problem).

I suspect that the shift to RCs will not be seen (at least initially) as a challenge to nation-state power. However, if economic dislocation persists the RC may become a political force that could challenge the viability of the nation-state (numerous flashpoints will emerge that could create political fragmentation).

[Syn Diesel]

Ya think? Just consider what Standard Oil did to the ethanol fuel industry during the early 20th century dawn of global fascism.

Between the New World Order State Capitalists enforcing impoverished dependency and the Pimental et al depopulationist Eco-Fascists guilt tripping liars and Disaster Pornographers, one should hold little hope looking forward to anything other than Post-Apocalyptic Road Warrior Adventures.

Thankfully the Gods have provided David Blume 30 years to document in his book Alcohol Can Be A Gas! (after 30 years of Big Oil Fascist suppression of his PBS series on ethanol) the simple truth about food and fuel security via well-documented systems engineering of Green Machines as discussed by Visionaries for well over a century.

No choosing between Fuel or Food. Ethanol is merely a small and low-value fractionation product of upgrading feedstocks. Cornstarch might yield $5 worth of auto fuel (better than diesel in optimized engines) per 56 lb bushel but the 1/3rd left over as 18 lbs of distiller's grains can yield $100s in products and produce more than that original 56 lb bushel of whole corn could ever had. Right about now the Internet Dog Contrarians start to scream thier Bloody Murder about The Grand Laws of Thermodynamics and Global Warming and Corn Subsidies and Poor Black Africans Starving, so I'll just preemptively answer them with a reminder that they know nothing about System Loops involving:

Combined Cycles, Topping Cycles, Bottoming Cycles, Peaking Cycles, Shaving Cycles, Swing Cycles, Split Cycles, Regeneration, Recuperation, Co-generation, Co-production, Co-location, Fractionation, Upgrading, Value-added Production, Localization, Send-Once Use-Many-Times Caching, Graceful Degradation, Scavenging, Methane Digesters, Digester Liquid Ferilizer, Mushroom Production, WDG, DDG, DS, CDS, DDS, DDGS, Mash, Stillage, Thin Stillage, Distillation, Sterilization, Pasteurization, Cyanobacteria, Algae, Single-cell Protein, Net Increased Feed Value, Earthworms, Vermicompost, Cattails, Sugar Beet, Soil Mining, Aquaculture, Heat Exchangers, Manure, Fertigation, Resource Recycling, Resource Replacement, Import Replacement, Tilapia and Shrimp Polyculture, Fishwater, Greenhouses, Carbon Dioxide Capture, Solar Thermal Energy, Permaculture and finally Getting Off Your Ass To Make A Buck Like You Give A Frak.

But then again Leviathan will probably just reintroduce Standard Oil's Alcohol Prohibition. This time they'll say it's to Protect The Earth From Biofuels rather than to Save Our Souls From Demon Rum. Can't wait to see how Billary's 2012 C.E. NWO Liberal Beneficent Dictatorship plays out.

Pardon the Internet Rant.

David Blume's Big $47 book:
http://permaculture.com/book_menu/360
http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/

[mi]

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